Re: any good LaTeX books/docs recommended to beginners?

[Jason Healy <jhealy@logn.net>]

At 1010596167s since epoch (01/08/02 23:09:27 -0500 UTC), Patrick Hsieh wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am very new to LaTex. Is there any good books or documents recommended
> for me? Any recommends highly appreciated. :-)

I've never read the "official" Lamport books, but I own and love

     "A Guide to LATEX:
     Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users" 
     by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly.

I picked it up when I first started learning LaTeX, and it gave me
almost everything I needed to know to write my thesis (120 pages,
illustrations, crossrefs, math typsetting, bibliography, etc).

The book contains simple short chapters covering all the basics (page
layout, fonts and sizes, graphics, math, commands), and has a nice
command reference to find things quickly.

The only thing I found lacking was a section on creating PDFs -- that
technology has changed a fair amount since the book came out.
However, the online docs cover that in enough detail, and are
independent of the standard LaTeX typesetting commands.

For quick reference, I also recommend using the LaTeX Quick Reference
card found at 

     http://www.refcards.com/

They won't help you learn LaTeX, but they're great for helping to
remember those little details, and they're small enough to keep by
your computer.

Jason

--
Jason Healy    |    jhealy@logn.net    |   http://www.logn.net/